I have inherited a setup of 2 servers that control our user logins and home directories for all our linux servers.

They have been setup as a cluster with heartbeat and drbd to control the homes folder that is shared between both servers, but im having a problem with getting user accounts to copy across.

Im assuming that i just have to have the same /etc/passwd file on both servers but what is the safest way to do this while having the master updating the slave server.

i was thinking rsync the passwd file but how do i get the master to copy to the slave when the servers fallover.

thanks

Have one machine keep the master record, running ypxfrd and /usr/lib/yp/ypinit -s to create a slave
so both systems will be automatically in sync

NO. Using rsync or things like that on passwd and shadow files may endup fatal to the system stability !

many thanks for the reponse.

Im assuming that i need to setup ypxfrd to start on boot on both master and slave.

then run "/usr/lib/yp/ypinit -s masterservername" on the slave server

and finally add 20 * * * * /usr/lib/yp/ypxfr_1perhour to cron on the slave server to copy across new users every hour.

yes
that should work.
Just add a dummy user and check if the user gets propogated to the slave server from master and master to slave
this way you will be sure that things are working.

works perfectly

thanks for the help